Another Department of state?

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19624, 21 May 1929, Page 8

Another Department of state?

It is reported to-day from Wellington that Cabinet is considering the conversion of the Publicity Office into a separate Department of State with, of course, widely extended activities and powers. Now better publicity for the Dominion is so much to be desired that any proposal for strengthening the Office ought to be sympathetically received. If the work done by officers within the Dominion is not sufficiently co-ordinated with the -work of officers overseas, that state of affairs should be ended, and to end it may cost money. So, also, if the Office has not a strong enough staff to enlarge as well as improve its output, it may be necessary to employ additional or more expensive officers. It is quite possible in publicity to waste £5 where the proper use of £lO would be all gain. The Office should not be starved, nor should a request fori wider powers be refused without consideration. But a request for a new Department of State is a different matter altogether. That should be refused, and should be condemned, whatever is said by officials in its favour. It is indeed disturbing, if it is true, that Cabinet should be giving the matter any consideration at all. Instead of increasing the number of Departments the Government should be wondering how to reduce them, and if it is not going to do this it has no right to talk of deficits and of increased taxation as evils that it would avoid if it eould. The Prime Minister began by condemning any farther encroachments by the State on the field of private enterprise. He began, that is to say. by condemning something specially and intimately associated with his own political and administrative career, and has almost come to regard himself now as the author of every proposal ever made for checking waste in national expenditure. Once at least we have also heard one of his Ministerial colleagues saying that he eould not support any proposal involving big increases in the number of public servants. Yet we have recently seen a new Department created for the control of Transport, and are threatened so soon after with another to carry out

i Publicity. No new Department ig called for, nor must the public submit to any heavy increases of expenditure by any Department without asking for a corresponding decrease somewhere else. If there were nothing else involved but the best use of the community's money, that in itself would forbid any further creations of public Departments. For while about ten per cent, of the community's income was taken by the Treasury thirty years ago, the proportion taken to-day is about 20 per cent., an enormous increase in the amount which the public must spend unprofitably. And as everyone knows, the burden of this falls with special force on the primary producer, who is not only the chief creator of all our wealth and comfort, but almost the only member of the community who cannot pass his burdens to someone else. It happens, however, that the economic aspects are not the only ones which the public must consider before they consent to new Departments of State. They must remember also the enormous power of officials, and the extent to which New Zealand already is over-governed. To consent to another Department of State is simply to sign away more liberties and to invite further financial burdens and personal tyrannies.